Overview
The New Mexico project does not offer geoqualificaiton, however does a number of methods to verify LMI qualification.
Geoqualification
In New Mexico, there is no geographic qualification methods, so we only focus on estimating the potential LMI population by various methods used in the state program.
LMI Qualification
New Mexico LMI Qualification methods include:
- Medicaid
- SNAP
- LIHEAP
- First-time home owner programs
- Affordable housing facilities
- HUD data (potential example)
- State specific (potential example)
- State and federal income tax credit
- Entire multi-family housing project may qualify if the entire load can be proved to be low-income subscribers, with consent of all tenants of record.
- LMI - 80% of AMI
Census data is available for the population receiving Medicaid, SNAP, and number of households at or below 80% AMI. The following analysis quantifies the total eligible LMI population by each of these three categories.
Solstice operates in the following three utility zones in New Mexico:
- Public Service Company of New Mexico
- Excel
- El Paso Electric
The table below shows total population by LMI qualification method by utility area coverage. Note, these LMI groups are not mutually exclusive, rather are snap shots of the individual method’s population.
The map shows the census tracts loaded with the LMI qualification methods by utility zone coverage.
Low Income Housing
To estimate the total number of New Mexicans residing in low income housing, we first require a list of eligible properties. We take each affordable rental property listed on the MFA Housing New Mexico website. After geocoding each point, we have several options for determining the population concentration around each point. A common technique in transportation modeling is applying an isocrhone, or a travel time map. In our case, we want to see how many eligible population of SNAP, Medicaid and 80% AMI households are within a 15 and 30 minute driving radius around each point.